Letters to the editor: Nov. 7

I don't hear about the long waits for doctors or medical procedures. And if so, the problem is not with the Affordable Care Act, but with too few people in the medical field. The answer is not to kick the poor out of line again.

Premium increases? Is anyone suggesting that had not been a way of life since health insurance became the for-profit animal it is, beginning in the late 1970s?

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Loss of jobs? The real culprit is that profit is more valued than the labor force.

And how about the beleaguered coal industry? Does the public really not know that natural gas availability and technological developments are causes of the drastic downturn in the need for coal? That other states are flying ahead in the development of the next sources of energy — wind and sun?

It is time for us to all accept responsibility for having allowed corporations to steal what democracy we had gained. Speech that can be drowned out by that of the people who can pay the most for it is not free speech. And the Constitution was written to protect humans, not corporations.

E. Joy Arnold

Chair, Central Kentucky Move to Amend

Midway

More signs before curves

On Oct. 13, the New York Times had a front-page article on guardrails on highways.

In Lexington, Gerard Gerhard, a retired lawyer in the attorney general's office, has taken on the issue of poor signage in curves.

Guardrails partially stop vehicles, but that is nothing compared to the 8,000 annual deaths in curves, mostly due to ineffective or missing signage. Accident reports where curves are involved generally note speeding, distracted driving or other driver error. But poor signage or lack of signage prior to curves are often not noted by media, nor even in police reports.

Damage to lives and limbs, private and public property, plus reduction of insurance losses due to fewer accidents in curves should be noted by the media for safety, stopping damages and providing financial savings for us all.

Don Pratt

Lexington

Cowardly bravado

I recently walked out my door to the echo of gunfire. My neighbor's terrified dog came running, fleeing the sounds of death.

It's that time of year when boys who would be men go about the recreation of killing defenseless animals, more often than not the female called the doe. Now there's a fearsome creature.

The American Psychiatry Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual defines a sociopath as a person who fails to feel remorse or guilt (it does not stipulate if the victim is a homo sapien or otherwise) and who has a tendency to display violence.

Both characteristics can apply to animal killers. Their puny excuse is "But I eat it." To which I respond, "And you're starving?"

At that point the hunter squirms. "But I'm doing them a favor because left to the elements they'll suffer and die." I reply, "Millions of people are suffering. Why aren't you mercy killing them?" Silence. Hunters are not out there carrying weapons that cost a mortgage payment because they're good Christians.

They're out there to kill for fun and brag about it by mounting the poor creature's head on the wall. Hunting is an act of cowardice masquerading as manly bravado.

Jacqueline Muth

Versailles

More historical context

Terry Foody's book about Lexington's 1830 cholera epidemic, as reported by Cheryl Truman, apparently leaves out two people who, alongside town drunk William "King" Solomon (who, incidentally, was a white man owned by Aunt Charlotte, a black woman; Charlotte Court off Newtown Pike honors her memory).

Those two other men are London Ferrel, a free black minister (who is the only black person buried in the Old Episcopal Burying Ground) and a young U.S. Army lieutenant on a recruiting trip from Fort Jefferson, Wis.: Jefferson F. Davis.

Yes, that Jeff Davis.

James Kemper Millard

Lexington

Discard campaign signs

The election has come and gone and the celebrations are over. I am now wondering if candidates and their volunteers will be as eager to take down campaign signs as they were putting them up.

I doubt it; as always, taxpayers will have to foot the bill. Sending city employees out to collect and dispose of them will cost hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Just another example of taxpayer abuse in Lexington-Fayette County.